Publicly accessible networks, such as the Internet, are often fraught with malicious activity performed by individuals referred to as bad actors. As such, these publicly accessible networks are often monitored to detect and mitigate such behavior. Additionally, these publicly accessible networks may be monitored to perform surveillance on individuals who may communicate using these publicly accessible networks while performing what is deemed by some to constitute illicit activities that may be performed outside of the publicly accessible networks.
Monitoring or surveillance of publicly accessible networks often requires the accumulation and analysis of large amounts of data, which is often referred to as big data. In general, big data is a term that has been adopted to mean a data set that is too large or complex for processing by conventional data processing applications. Analysis of this big data often entails finding correlations or relationships among seemingly independent bits and pieces of information. These correlations or relationships may then be used to infer information that can be used to determine illicit activities performed by the illicit users.